18jun28 – Duterte better drop subject of religion

POSTSCRIPT / June 28, 2018 / Thursday

Duterte better drop subject of religion

By FEDERICO D. PASCUAL JR.

PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte is not doing himself, and the country, any good by attacking the Bible and the Catholic Church, getting into an unnecessary dispute over religion that could cause serious damage all around.

Three days after antagonizing a wide swath of the dominantly Catholic population by calling their God stupid, he continued his tirades before advisers convinced him to open a dialogue with the bishops and other religious leaders.

Until yesterday, all the frogs in the Palace pond were in full chorus trying to drown out the rising voices of the heretofore silent majority. Can their croaking soften what the President already said about Creation and a supposedly stupid God?

Duterte, a prosecutor in his salad days, has tried clarifying: “What I said was your God is not my God, because your God is stupid. Mine has a lot of common sense.”

Why doesn’t he just drop the subject? His remarks have already been fully recorded and broadcast all over the planet, bolstering negative things that critics and skeptics have thought of him all along.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the team going to dialogue with religious leaders includes him, Pastor Boy Saycon of the EDSA People Power Commission and Foreign Undersecretary Ernesto Abella, a former presidential spokesman.

But the President continued to be unapologetic despite the upcoming dialogue with the bishops led by his friend Davao Archbishop Romulo Valles, the new president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

Duterte claimed his remarks were taken out of context and that they were just in reaction to Sister Patricia Fox’s engaging in partisan politics. (But the recording of his controversial speech in Davao did not mention the 71-year-old Australian nun.)

Addressing last Tuesday some 2,000 barangay chairpersons in Region X at the Atrium Convention Center in Cagayan de Oro City, he insisted: “I said your God is not my God. Why do you bind me with something stupid? I am given a brain to think.”

He challenged the inspired authority of the Bible and mocked beliefs based on the Michelangelo painting of the Last Supper:

“I said not everything in the Bible is true. Who published that Bible? Do they have printing press then? And even the Last Supper. Who are the idiots there? They just turned those who were depicted in the painting into saints — San Isidro, San Pablo, Saint Jude, Santo Rodrigo, just about anyone.”

Still, Duterte professed: “I believe in a Universal Being. I believe there is Somebody up there. Because if not for that Being, there are billions and trillions of stars, then sumabog na tayo dyan.”

• CBCP veep reacts to Duterte’s blast

LISTEN to the reaction of Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio S. David, CBCP vice president, speaking in Taglish so more Filipinos can understand the message: